Sample Poems by Vanessa Haley
Great Blue Heron
My mother had a collection of 78s:
Bing Crosby, The Platters, Patty Paige,
and Nat King Cole. At Christmas she played
them repeatedly, dabbing liquid snow
in stencils on the picture window:
reindeer and trees lined up in a row.
After the holidays she used diluted
ammonia to remove the designs. Convoluted
paper chains and angel wings of fluted
chiffon Mother made on her sewing
machine we hung on the tree, knowing
the stuffed squirrel, its tail blowing
in a windless breeze, would be placed
last by my father. Its small arms embraced
an acorn varnished for longevity and its face,
slightly moth-eaten, had a smile the taxidermist
must have worked hard to achieve. Had a biologist
viewed us under a microscope so the tiniest
cracks would be revealed, she would have seen
that eventually the record collection, gleaned
for romance, would warp in the heat
of the attic. My father would grow angry
when he’d lose his job at the Chrysler factory
because the economy slowed.. That is the story.
There would not be a sudden turn
of events, nor a lesson to be learned
from it all. If a great blue heron,
lost from the river of gleaming fish,
landed in our front yard like a wish
come true and swept me up in a swish
of its enormous gray wings, I would still be
a child seeing the dead deer trophy
draped across the car’s hood, the bloody
bullet hole in the animal’s side,
a secret place I could crawl into and hide.
I imagined when it felt the blow and tried
to outrun its overwhelming fear,
blackening its brain erase the deer
its heart emptied the vast frontier
of all it cherished: goldfinches, the pond at twilight,
snow just settling on fields, sounds familiar at night:
the owl swooping to the ground drenched in moonlight
for mice searching too for sustenance, lost
in a hunger or a need that would eventually cost
them everything. Or the faint crunch of frost
under its hoofs in late fall. What matters, of course,
after years of tearing apart and reassembling the picture,
is only this: that they did the best they could. On shore
the blue heron’s eye holds me inside its tiny aperture.
Queen for a Day
When I turned seven my mother made me a penguin
birthday cake--black and white--candles glowing
on the dining room table. She had planned a party: sequin
confetti, balloons and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Blowing
throughout the morning and afternoon, snow sealed shut
the first floor windows and doors, while the world became
a cold blank with no friends arriving. But we cut
the cake and ate the penguin, piece by piece, maimed
its perfect symmetry of black wings and orange
feet all that week. I watched Queen for a Day
with Mother, the applause meter measuring ruins of marriage
and love. One was a widow in a wheelchair, another a gray
grandmother whose husband squandered their savings on horses
and whiskey and lost their home in foreclosure. She wept quietly
on TV, her shoulders shaking. In my child’s mind I imagined forces
working against them, like snow in its infinite designs piously
canceling my birthday party. It was out of my control. The Queen
got a crown, some roses and a royal throne, a washer and dryer
of Harvest Gold, as though you could launder bad luck. It seemed
pathetic, like a deer foraging for food caught in barbed wire.
The Golden Beetle of Costa Rica
We joked at one point that from all of the radiation
Mother would rival the golden beetle of Costa Rica,
gilded and beautiful but a pariah
among other insects. She had tried meditation,
mega doses of vitamins and herbal teas,
positive imaging and aromatherapy.
She stayed in bed surrounded by bowls
of crushed lavender and china cups stained
with lipstick. It started with a few moles
changing shape, then the fatigue and pain,
her jawbone dead set against surrender,
determined to beat the odds and live
out her last years in the condo in Florida.
She bought a birdcage and two canaries to give
herself something to do. She named them Lydia
and Martin and taught them to sing, believing
her monotone rendering of Perry Como tunes
inspired their tremulous warbling.
In my childhood bedtime, she read me myths
from around the world. I imagined
Medusa in the weeping willows, hair in the wind
of a hurricane, tangling in complex knots.
Once we walked downtown after a snowstorm
and ice crusted snow collapsed as she fought
to keep her head above a white cavern of cold.
In my red boots I felt helpless, but she warned
me not to get too close so the snow would not fold
around her in an avalanche. I made my way blindfolded
by wind back to the house and got Dad to help. He scolded
us but laughed at the same time about her disappearing
into thin air. Looking down at her in that white hole,
I saw for the first time oblivion, impersonal and persistent as snow,
erasing deer grazing, the yellow of canaries, my words, don’t go.